גולדה מאיר

Golda Meir (1898-1978), Labour Zionist leader, diplomat and Israel's fourth Prime Minister, born in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) as Golda Mabovitch. In 1906 the family brought her to the United States and lived in Milwaukee. At school she joined a Zionist youth movement, Poalei Zion. She went on to marry Morris Myerson and the couple emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1921. They initially joined Kibbutz Merhavia. Three years later they moved to Jerusalem, where Golda Myerson, now known as Golda Meir, became a staff member of the Histadrut labour federation and held a succession of positions in their trade union and welfare departments and also in the federation's construction corporation, Solel Boneh.

Later she was appointed head of the Histadrut political section where she was able to work to further the organization's aims of encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine. Between 1932 and 1934 Meir worked as an emissary in the United States, serving as secretary of the Hechalutz women's organization. In 1946 she became director of the political department of the Jewish Agency in which capacity she met with King Abdullah of Jordan in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid war between Jews and Arabs when the British gave up their Mandate over Palestine. Elected to the Executive of the Jewish Agency, she was active in fundraising in the United States to help cover the costs of the Israeli War of Independence, and became one of the State's most effective spokesmen.

In June 1948, Meir was appointed Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1949 she was elected a Member of the Knesset and was chosen by Prime Minister Ben Gurion to be Minister of Labour during the years of mass immigration and resulting social unrest and high unemployment. She initiated policies of subsidized housing and social welfare in order to speed the integration of the newcomers into Israeli society.

Between 1956 and 1966 Meir was Minister of Foreign Affairs and inaugurated policies of assisting the development of the newly independent nations of Africa. At the same time, she endeavored to cement relations with the United States and other countries. When in 1969 Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died, she was chosen to succeed him. In the October 1969 elections, she led the Labour party to victory. Shortly after she took office, the "War of Attrition" broke out. Initially this war was a series of sporadic military actions along the Suez Canal, but they escalated into full-scale war which ended in a cease-fire agreement with Egypt in 1970. As Prime Minister, Meir concentrated much of her energies on the diplomatic front mixing personal diplomacy with skillful use of the mass media. Armed with an iron will, a warm personality and grandmotherly image she successfully solicited unprecedented amounts of financial and military aid for Israel.

Although she showed strong leadership during the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War, securing an American airlift of arms while standing firm on the terms of disengagement-of-forces negotiations, the Prime Minister considered the very outbreak of war and Israel's unpreparedness to be a personal failure. Golda Meir therefore bowed to what she felt was the "will of the people" and resigned in mid-1974. She withdrew from public life and began to write her memoirs.